Zoe Leonard
You see I am here after all, 2008
installation, 4.000 postcards approx.
variable dimensions
Installation view at Dia:Beacon, New York, 2010.
Photo: Bill Jacobson

Zoe Leonard presents a new work comprising several thousand vintage postcards of Niagara Falls, dating from the early 1900s to the 1950s. Rendered stereotypical and generic through repetition over decades, these landscape motifs are emblematic of mass culture’s transformation of natural sites into tourist destinations.
Source: Dia Art Center website

Oriol Vilanova
Copia ( 2000-ongoing)
1181 postcards
variable dimensions
installation view at Parra & Romero, Madrid, 2012.

Copias (2000 – Ongoing) is a collection of postcards of Triumphal Arches from all over the world. A Babelic approximation of occidental culture’s features, exploits and victories. The repetition of the symbol and its re-design during one thousand years; the copy; the exception. The collection of postcards works as a tale of the history of photography, from its beginnings until nowadays, tracing techniques and formats from anonymous photographers. The postcard as an advertising space and the perpetuation of a large-scale cliché. Copias is an open archive, with no expected end. Far from being a corpse, this is a space of possibilities, construction and free association for memory and fiction. The artist will keep sending new postcards weekly; the piece will be growing according to the postcards he will find. The installation offers a physical occupation of the space, conditioning the spectator’s movement, his perception and expectation. An approximation both poetical and critical.
Source: Parra & Romero gallery press release.